Heroes Don't Cry
by Clematis14
Summary: They say heroes don’t cry, but you know better. You wish you could cry like she does.
1. Heroes Don't Cry

It's your first time back home since _he_ decided to be a hero again, home for the holidays, but you don't truly belong here anymore. You were excited to see your family, to see your little sister who you left behind, not so little anymore, though she never was. You walked up the front steps last night, _he_ was flanking your right side and the girl with your heart in her hand on your left and you knocked, once, twice, three times. You could hear commotion inside and you swallowed nervously, excited to see the faces of some forgotten family members who had somehow made themselves scarce in your mind since _he_ left for the hunt, taking you and steadfast loyalty with _him_. Instead, you were greeted with the pointy ends of two wands; you took a step back and held up your hands. "It's me, Ron!" you said, they couldn't see your face in the dark so one of the wands lit up revealing its owner to be your brother George. He surveyed you quickly and then ushered the three of you inside. It was late out, midnight on Christmas Eve and you were soon informed that everyone else except for George and his twin, the holder of the second wand had gone to bed. You all looked a little bit crestfallen to know you wouldn't see anyone until the next morning, but it was probably for the best.

You wake up this morning and you're happy for the first time in months. Your room is orange and it hurts your eyes a bit, but its familiar and warm and you never want to leave, though you know you have to soon. You get dressed and walk downstairs into a room that you can, right away, feel. You can smell sorrow in the air, hard metallic salty sorrow and you know that the other person in the room is the one with sorrow in her eyes. She's crying, you see as you look on her face but you can't really fathom why she's crying in the first place, after all, you're happy to be home, happy to see her. She bends her head low and her red hair covers her face, she doesn't want you to see her cry, crying is a vulnerability she just can't afford. What took the happy smile off your not so little sister's face? It's _him_. _He_ must me the cause of her sorrow, because you know she loves _him_ and you know that _he_ broke her heart. "What's wrong?" you ask of the girl with the sorrow in her eyes. She picks her head up, holds it high and you realize that no boy can make her cry.

"I'm scared." And she's angry with you for leaving her alone to worry everyday if _he_ was going to live and come back to her, if you were going to ever have the time to grow up. _He_ broke her heart, sure, but you can remember her saying that no boy is worth her tears and her day of greatest shame would be the day an ordinary boy would make her cry_. "Anyone who I don't love is not worth my tears, is not worth my sorrow."_ She once told you and you thought that was rather strong of her. She was always rather strong, though you never gave her the credit. You know she never cried because of a boy.

"Why are you crying?" you ask.

She looks up at you; her eyes puffy and red, her heart raw and open and you know that by leaving her you killed a part of her. "Because no one else will cry for you three." She states as if it was supposed to make sense to you just then. Heroes don't cry, that's what we're taught. _He_ would be remembered as a hero, who never had the time to be young, who never had the life to love, who would lose a part of _himself_ once this war was over and there was no one left to protect. You too would be a hero, for fighting the good fight, but to anyone who really mattered you would just be the boy who's heart was sold at age 11 to someone else too close for comfort and you were too scared to bring her back a step to look her in the face and tell her you loved her. Your sister cried **for **_him_, not because of _him_, she cried **for** _his_ danger, **for** _his_ life, **for** _his_ heart because she knew _he_ must be breaking inside, but heroes don't cry.

She stays home with your mother, watches people come in and out of the house like flurries in a snowstorm caught on the wind. She watches with open eyes and sees everything. She watches your mother cry herself to sleep, can hear the tears fall in soft pitter-patters on the wooden floors the nights your father is out on missions. She watches your mother tote around a clock, which tells her that everyone she knows and loves, is in mortal peril. She never cries in front of your mother because your mother is hurting so much that what she really needs is a strong person filled with love to tell her that everything is alright and we're all going to make it through this. And she tells your mother this, even when the world is falling down around her and she's never felt pain this intense before. You know she watches as your brothers come in late every night after working all day in their joke shop and then working all night for the ministry to develop inventions to maybe turn the tide of things. The only reason they come home is to show everyone that they're still alive, but they don't live here and she doesn't know how much longer they'll live at all. She waits up at night, developing terrible insomnia just to see their faces for a brief moment, and its not as if she can sleep anyways. No one can sleep anymore.

It's a terrible thing you did, leaving her behind. You know she was brave enough to come with you, but you really can't risk losing her. _He_ certainly wouldn't be the same if anything happened to her. What neither or you realized was that it was all happening to her, it was all affecting her and she cried herself to sleep every night if she slept at all because she held it in all day. She used to be the happiest person you knew, and even now, when you know she's dying, she's more alive than anyone else you've come upon. She's the hero you wish you could be. The silent hero who you come upon in a story who is always there in the background, but you never really notice her.

You'll be celebrated because you went out to fight the good fight with _hi_m, to defeat evil and change the world and get the girl. You'll be celebrated because you never cried, nothing moved you to tears and maybe they shouldn't be celebrating that at all. She's the real hero, your not so little sister who stays at home and tells your mother it's all going to work out for the best. Who cooks dinner on those days when your mother is just too tired to even think about eating and then makes her eat anyways. Who waits at home for the newspaper to see if maybe you were written about, if _he_ had made any progress. Who waits at home to make sure everyone is alright. She's the hero because she can cry. She's your hero because she isn't numb to it all, she can feel it and she feels even for what doesn't affect her, she's sad because sad things happen, not to her but to anyone worth caring about at all. She's your hero and you wish maybe that in the end you wouldn't be celebrated despite how much you know you'll enjoy the attention because as brave as you are, you're still a coward. You should tell that girl with your heart that you love her, but instead you fight the good fight, while your little sister cries because love is slowly being extinguished before her once very innocent eyes. Yes, she holds you all together, but who is there to hold her together? _He_ certainly can't be.

"Come on," you say. "Chin up, it is Christmas Eve after all, and your big brother knows just the thing to make it better." You give her a long hug, breathing in her beautiful sorrow just as, you imagine, she breathes in your cowardice and maybe a bit of fire left in your clothing. "It's all going to be alright." You tell her, though you know it isn't and it'll never be the same. She's your hero, you'd never tell her that, but she is. No one will ever know that Ginny Weasley saved us all, even the Boy-Who-Lived and his best friends she won't be remember as a hero. But you know differently. They say heroes don't cry, but you know better. You wish you could cry like she does.


	2. Left At the Beginning

**AN: ok so this is just a story all of one shots centered around Ginny, it'll probably end up sort of like a story with all the pieces coming together randomly. It will be from all different point of views but every few chapters or so will be from Ginny's direct point of view. So here is the first chapter in Ginny's point of view. Enjoy!**

Chapter 2: Left At the Beginning

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It was all very clear to me suddenly; the reason that we all live and die and I knew that somehow I had a purpose standing there in the kitchen of my childhood home watching my mother douse her sorrows in tea laced with firewhiskey, a surefire cure. I suddenly knew the meaning of life and why we're constantly searching for all the things we ever wanted or needed but never got no matter how hard we tried. I knew why love was so important to some and money to others. I knew about sex and boys and sins and other deadly things that I dare not mention. Standing there in my kitchen I knew everything about the world, which knew nothing of me, but as soon as I moved it was all gone and I couldn't remember why I was living or if there was even a God. I had never been very religious, and I didn't know what to believe. I could only pray that there was one as my mum had always taught me and hope to the high heavens that he could somehow stop our mortal mischief or maybe change the flow of time, speed it up so things were over, or go back a bit to when this whole mess started.

Everything always starts somewhere. For me it started long before I was ever born, maybe even before my parents were born. For me everything started at the beginning of time because every event in the past is somehow connected to an event in the future and we're all just events causing chain reactions all over the place. Sometimes we're lucky and sometimes we aren't but we're all affected some way or another. Maybe more directly it starts with a boy named Tom Riddle who was very misguided his whole life and how exactly he came to be the person he is today if he really is human, no one can ever really know or correctly guess, but Tom Riddle is where it begins I think. Enough about Tom Riddle though because this isn't about him, this is about what happened to him, what happened to us all and where we all end up and how we got there, isn't that life? What is life? I think I knew the meaning once, maybe even a moment ago but it's a tricky thing that just slipped away. I was lucky once, blessed with my entire family, but Tom Riddle wasn't so lucky, he was lonely more than anything else. Some people think that nastiness is a terrible thing, but at least when someone is nasty to you, you feel it, and you know what they think and they acknowledge you. The worst thing in the world, the most dreadful disease of all, I'm afraid to say is neglect because with neglect sometimes people just fade away. With neglect you feel it hard and the worst part of it all is that it is unintentional and very hard to fix. And its ridiculous that all of these people around us need other people to make them happy, need to feel loved and need to have attention, but I guess that's life and we crave each other and there is no helping. Maybe it's some sick joke that God is just messing with out heads making us think that we need other people but then giving everyone there own secret agenda in life, a certain drive that leads them to neglect and ignore others the way we've all been ignored before, the way that we've all ignored before. If that is so, then I don't think I can believe in God, or at least the God that I was raised to believe in, the one with benevolence and not spite. And if we are all made in the image of God, then God must be entirely flawed because we're all flawed in some way or another. And why does the world seem to be crashing down and how did it get to be that way? I guess I'll never really know, I could never really find out, but it all began somewhere for me. I guess I still have to believe, because we all have to believe in something or else we wouldn't bother in getting up in the morning. Even my mother who has had so much taken from her still gets up, still inspires me. I have a lot of things to hope for I guess.

I've come to learn that sometimes the things that push us along are bigger than the things that hold us back. I have to hope that those things will just keep pushing me forward, past war, past death, past depression, back to happier times when we could have time to be a family and when I could worry about money or love or normal things and not have to worry about if my mother was eating or if I'd die the next day still a virgin. Time, for instance keeps pushing us along, and it was something I could never get a hold of no matter how hard I tried. It just never stopped and continually forced me to move forward even when other things held me back, death, possession, unrequited love, betrayal, murder. But life just kept going and I kept getting older. Maybe I wasn't so innocent anymore. I'm not now I think, or maybe I am compared to everyone else? More time brought more experiences, some good, some bad, but most of the time I wished for life to slow down, or even for time to stop. I wish now, that time would just go how I like it, just go nice and fast so I can breeze on by and before I even think about anything at all, all of this will be over. Nowadays I spend too much time thinking.

My childhood existence was sunshine and butterflies compared to everyone else in my family. I grew into peace and was therefore allowed to wreak my own form of havoc but for everyone else, it was war, for everyone else it was a little bit crazy. For Bill, so much older than me, it was the first war, the same with Charlie and Percy, they could still remember it because its how they grew and how they lived for a while. They grew in war and lived in peace, I grew in peace and lived in war. Fred and George can't really recollect the war from their early lives but they never really had anything. Dad was young and excited but his work was tainted by the war that wasn't coming to a close anytime soon and he had a hard time making ends meat. My mum would fret over the state of all of her children, they weren't allowed outside all that much towards the end, that's probably why Percy never played Quidditch like the rest of us. Even when the war was over we were dreadfully poor and money was being spent on baby diapers for me and sick bills for everyone else and dad was at work at all hours being paid so little to help clean everything up after the war. Ron too was born into the war but it was over a year later when I was born, a year later when the boy who lived, Harry Potter vanquished the darkest wizard of our time, vanquished that poor neglected boy, Tom Riddle. Ron suffered a different kind of struggle than the rest, he grew into peace too, but he was neglected. We loved him so much, but Bill and Charlie were off being Quidditch stars and Head Boys and Percy was getting along in his studies. Fred and George had each other and were brilliant in their own way, and I unintentionally hogged the attention of everyone, because I was the first girl in the Weasley family for seven generations, and I was incurably cute if I do say so myself.

They all left though, because war does that sometimes, it can't be helped. We're still a family, but I'm here at home while they are all out living their lives. I'm just stuck at war waiting for something to happen. Maybe I'm waiting for peace? I think I'm waiting for love but I don't really know. I never did know. What do we ever know our whole lives? One second I think I know everything but the next second what I thought I knew turns out to be nothing at all. I don't know if there's a god, or why we keep on living or why we need each other, but I guess we're all human. I'm just left at the beginning because everything has to start somewhere.


	3. Tears

It starts in your chest and pushes its way up your throat and into your nose, which gets kind of runny. Then it's in your head and behind your eyes, which get nice and shiny. Your cheeks feel heavy and your eyebrows scrunch up and your lips curve downward and one, the bottom one, sticks out farther than normal. The bags under your eyes turn redder, and it may stop there, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you can feel the wetness and the sadness and then you can't see, you blink, you blink again until the wetness overflows onto your cheek or nose and down over your lips or under your chin. Sometimes its only a few drops that you don't bother to wipe away because they feel right in the moment, and sometimes you stick out your tongue to taste the salt, lick it right from the top corners or your lips. Sometimes it streams, leaving desolate little trails in its wake, paths of desertion on your cheeks. Your throat closes up and its difficult to breath if it comes hard enough, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it stops after a bit. Sometimes you can't stop. Sometimes you can't control it. You try to stop, try to shrink back in and dry up all by yourself, but then you get those sharp, small upward gasps that you can't tell are coming, but almost always come in threes. It's hard to think, but you still manage, only messy, dangerous thoughts, though. You have to sniff hard and sometimes you employ the use of your sleeve under your nose or your hands for your cheeks or under your eyes. Your eyes get puffy and stay like that for a while. That may be it. That may be all there is to it. Sometimes it isn't, sometimes it's much worse. Your pain comes out in sobs a low moan and then a shuddering wail that changes pitch a lot and just makes the droplets come harder. You need to grab something, to muffle the noise, to numb the pain; it's hard to do that. It's a private thing; no one is supposed to hear you. You can bang your fists or ball them up on some piece of fabric, you can hug a stuffed animal, throw things and feel them break, like everything else seems to be breaking inside you, or pray or whisper to yourself, tell yourself to buck up, but you are out of control. It's out of your hands. That's why heroes don't cry, they can't be in control, they can't be weak, or maybe they just can't cry. You just never know.


	4. Girl

A/N So the song in this chapter is "Girl" by Beck. I got the idea while I was listening to it. I hope you enjoy it! Review please.

The summer before I left for the Horcrux hunt was probably the best summer of my short life so far. Minus the fact that I couldn't actually date Ginny Weasley, she made everything else a little bit more worthwhile. The first time I saw her that summer had been at Bill and Fleur's wedding.

_"I saw her"_

Mr. Weasley had decided to bring home some muggle contraptions from his job that would help the guests enjoy themselves. What he had neglected to realize was that wizards didn't understand unenchanted muggle devices very well. I saw, or rather heard Ginny from the other side of the house where I had been getting some punch. I could hear loud banging and terrible curing issuing from around the corner.

_"Yea I saw her with her black tongue tied round the roses"_

I walked around the corner slowly and poked my head through some rose bushes, careful not to get pricked. She stood in a golden bridesmaid's dress that didn't leave as much up to the imagination as her five older brothers (minus Percy) would have liked. I however, liked it just fine. The light caught on her in that moment and even though she was swearing and cursing it looked like she was reflecting the sun off of herself despite her fake jewelry and pretty golden dress. Her red hair was all shiny and her eyes were angry and golden.

"_A fist pounding on a vending machine_

_Toy diamond ring stuck on her finger"_

In that moment all I wanted to do was touch her but I knew I couldn't because well…because we weren't together anymore and I was going to leave anyways, maybe forever, I didn't really know, and I couldn't do that to her, I couldn't leave her like that.

I walked up to her and gently pulled her away from the vending machine by her shoulders and pushed the correct button, giving the machine a soft kick and handing her the muggle soft drink. She blushed a bit when she looked at me and scowled at the machine.

That summer Ginny Weasley was the brightest thing around for miles. She was the hidden peace in the most hectic of times. Boy could she glow. Maybe I was the only one who saw it, but sometimes I wished she wasn't so bright. I wished she didn't' glow so much because it made her special It made her a target.

"_With a noose she can hang from the sun."_

But there she was, this resilient irrepressible thing, who could threaten with a glare and soften with a glance, and it broke my heart a little to know that she wouldn't be happy for very much longer. She could fight anything, but she couldn't fight this, what was about to come, because I knew she couldn't stand being left behind.

_"And put it out with her dark sunglasses"_

I had determined that this specific summer was going to be my last farewell to fun before I bore the beast of responsibility and made life difficult for everyone else. It only gets worse before it gets better. That summer though, it was like the golden age of some fallen and forgotten empire, a plateau of excellence before the sharp decline to rock solid bottom.

Everyone seemed to know I would be leaving at the end of the summer, but no one ever really mentioned anything or even knew why except for Ron and Hermione who would, of course be going with me. It was a shame to leave everyone in the dark. They all knew, though. They all knew that I was going and they decided to make my last hurrah a little more worthwhile.

I have quick memories of happy times. Of climbing trees with the Weasley brothers, and hearing Hermione yell about how unsafe it all was, while Ginny had already beaten us to the top. I remember watching the girls laze out by a lazy river out behind the Burrow and sharing my admiration for the fairer sex with Ron. There were clear days and starry nights with bugs and rustles and summertime music. I remember waking up to Ginny singing in the shower and maybe thinking about more scandalous and entirely forbidden thoughts. I remember Quidditch, the time that Fred had knocked me off of my broom and Ginny had dove spectacularly to catch me.

There were muggle fireworks one night and I remember traveling a town over for no reason at all besides the fact that it was summer and fireworks and summer and pretty girls went nicely together. I can recall Ginny illuminated under the reds and blues of the sky with the crashes in the background and how I had almost kissed her. I'll just have to remember it and wish it could have happened.

Then there was the day at the beach. We had arrived there, Ron, Hermione, Bill, George, Ginny and I midmorning and quickly constructed our camp with umbrellas (Hermione's doing, and a bit of mine too) and towels. As soon as we had set up, Ginny raced me to the shore, winning with an unfair head start, she dove into the surf and rode the waves all the way back to me. I suppose that's how things were, one of us would dive in, but I had to hope (I needed to hope) that things would be brought back to the way that they were supposed to be. She ran our onto the sand stumbling about and tried to pull me forward with her, into an area further down the beach where the water was full of gross seaweed because she knew I didn't like it between my toes and underfoot.

"_Walking crooked down the beach"_

I spashed her, and got salt water into her mouth. She retaliated by dunking my head under and running out of the water to spit on the sand. She didn't really care much for acting like a girl while Hermione lay next to a napping Ron, tanning and reading a book.

"_She spits on the sand_

_Where their bones are bleaching"_

We slept on the beach that night, with a bonfire and the stars.

It was all about impressing her that summer. In fact it was all about _her_ that summer, because after that I had to act like I didn't care, I had to act like a dispassionate fool who didn't care enough to give away any information in the off chance that she was captured by Death Eaters. I didn't want her to get hurt again like Voldermort had hurt her before. She was my weakness, my Achilles' heal and I couldn't risk the enemy knowing about that. Until the time I had to leave though, it was all about Ginny Weasley.

_"And I know I'm gonna steal her eye"_

I wish I could have told her about everything I was thinking and feeling and why I had to go, I wanted to make her understand. I knew she was being very understanding by not forcing me to stay. She knew that if she asked me to stay I wouldn't go, and I had to go for everyone else. Ginny wasn't selfish.

_"She doesn't even know what's wrong"_

I couldn't risk caring about her. I already did care though, I just couldn't show it.

"_And I know I'm gonna make her die_

_And take her where her soul belongs"_

I tried all sorts of things to impress her. I read books she had read so I could talk to her about them. I followed all of her favorite quidditch teams. I incessantly pumped Ron for information that would make her laugh or just teach me more about her. I would practice flying when I knew she was watching to appear impressive. I know I was foolish, but I just couldn't help it.

"_And I know I'm gonna steal her eye_

_Nothing that I wouldn't try."_

The summer suited her. The summer suited _us_; I just wish we could have been more. I wish _I_ could have been more. I will always take away with me though, that image of her with the sun in her eyes when I knew she was angry and when I knew she was beautiful and burning. I knew she was scalding.

"Hey my sun-eyed girl 

_Hey my sun-eyed girl_

_My sun-eyed girl_

_Hey my sun-eyed girl"_

Just when everything was going well, just when I was making my peace and starting to plan my journey ahead is when everything started to go wrong for me, but for a while it was so good. Then the nightmares started.

_"I saw her"_

Terrible visions came to me that woke me up in cold sweats. Images of Ginny dying, of her being tortured or burned of her trying to escape, or her running away or being hurt. I had images of myself giving in to save her, but most of all; I had images of her not waiting around for me, of her just moving on.

"_Yea I saw her_

_With her hands tied back_

_Rags a' burnin'"_

I could hear her screams in my ears and would wake up just to peak into her room to see that she was still there, breathing steadily.

"Calling out from a landfilled life" 

I could see her writing her last goodbyes to her family. I knew she had to leave something to remember her by, she was that kind of person. Even in my dreams she was vivid and true.

"_Scrawlin' her name upon the ceiling_

_Throw a coin in a fountain of dust"_

Suddenly things weren't as peaceful anymore. As I began packing for my trip the golden age began to ebb. Mrs. Weasley became more frantic as everyone began to realize more was afoot behind the scenes in their own home.

"_White noise_

_Bells are ringing"_

Death Eater attacks were increasing and I felt the pressing need to leave. It would be easiest not to say goodbye.

_"Got a ticket for my midnight hanging"_

We had decided to leave in the dead of night with no one to stop us, and nothing to explain. People would understand that it was necessary and we would probably be back to celebrate Christmas, hopefully with a good chunk of progress accomplished.

With my bags packed and my heart sealed shut we (Ron, Hermione and I) made our way down from Ron's attic room to the lower levels of the house with one last quiet look around as we proceeded. I stopped outside of Ginny's room to peak in only to realize she was missing. Ron and Hermione had already gone ahead and when I looked up she was standing across from me in the hallway. Her white night gown fluttered softly around her legs and the expression on her face is one that remains seared into the back of my eyelids that will forever haunt me. She looked wild, her face alight and hair messy, and all at once it all went out of her like someone had punched her in the stomach. She knew what we were doing, she knew that we were leaving her and she hadn't been meant to figure things out until the following morning. She didn't cry though. She didn't smile or laugh or move at all. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me with hollow eyes that were watery but still and I knew she could take it. I never doubted it.

I stepped forward to hug her but she took a step back and crossed her arms. She looked so meek and strange, for Ginny Weasley was never meek and certainly never frightened. The seal over my heart almost burst for when I took another step forward, she stepped aside motioning with her hands that I was supposed to go forward. There were no words.

_"Throw a bullet from a freight train leaving"_

And so I dove in again, forging forward and hoping that my trail would lead me back like a boomerang or the surf or even like the circle of life, because I fully expected to be dead by now. Maybe though, maybe when it's all done I'll be alive and selfish. Maybe she'll wait for me. Maybe I'll marry her or even just have her as mine and be able to touch her and look at her without drawing any suspicions.

"_And I know I'm gonna steal her eye_

_She doesn't even know what's wrong_

_And I know I'm gonna make her die_

_And take her where her soul belongs_

_And I know I'm gonna steal her eye_

_Nothing that I wouldn't try"_

I had to come back though, I didn't try to leave a legacy but I would. Maybe my dream Ginny had some good idea; to leave a bit behind that way you have something to come back to. Maybe that's what I was supposed to learn. Either way, I know I have to come back, at least one last time, but who knows how long that will be really.

"_Hey my sun-eyed girl_

_Hey my sun-eyed girl_

_My sun-eyed girl_

_Hey my sun-eyed girl"_

Ginny was like my drug, like my poison. I couldn't stay away and it was a fatal attraction literally.

"_Hey my sun-eyed girl_

_Hey my sun-eyed girl_

_My cyanide girl_

_Hey my sun-eyed girl"_

Maybe in the end the gold and the glitter and the beauty would rub off on me. Until then I would have one gorgeous summer to remember before I took the plunge, before I had to be the hero.


End file.
